A Change in the Weather—Rabbits and Bears Appear.

“Hi! Hallo! I say, Nelly, what’s all this?” There was good cause for the tone of surprise in which Roy uttered these words when he awoke, for the fireplace and the lower half of his own, as well as his sister’s, blanket were covered with at least half a foot of snow. It had found its way in at the hole in the roof of the hut, and the wind had blown a great deal through the crevices of the doorway, so that a snow-wreath more than a foot high lay close to Nelly’s elbow.

This was bad enough, but what made it worse was that a perfect hurricane was blowing outside. Fortunately the hut was sheltered by the woods, and by a high cliff on the windward side; but this cliff, although it broke the force of the gale, occasioned an eddy which sent fearful gusts and thick clouds of snow ever and anon full against the doorway.

“O Roy! what shall we do?” said Nelly, in an anxious tone.

“Don’t know,” said Roy, jumping up and tightening his belt; “you never can know what’s got to be done till you’ve took an observation o’ what’s goin’ on, as daddy used to say. Hallo! hold on. I say, if it goes on like this it’ll blow the hut down. Come, Nelly, don’t whimper; it’s only a puff, after all, an’ if it did capsize us, it wouldn’t be the first time we had a tumble in the snow. Seems to me that we’re goin’ to have a stormy Sabbath, though. Rouse up, lass, and while you’re clearin’ off the snow, I’ll go get a bundle o’ sticks, and light the fire.”

Roy stooped to pass under the low doorway, or, rather, hole of the hut, and bending his head to the blast passed out; while Nelly, whose heart was cheered by her brother’s confident tone more than by his words, set about shovelling away the snow-drift with great activity.

Presently Roy returned, staggering under a heavy load of firewood.

“Ho! Nell,” he cried, flinging down the wood with a clatter, “just you come an’ see Silver Lake. Such a sight it is you never saw; but come slick off—never mind your belt; just roll your blanket round you, over head and ears—there,” said he, assisting to fasten the rough garment, and seizing his sister’s hand, “hold on tight by me.”

“Oh, what a storm!” gasped the little girl, as she staggered out and came within the full force of the gale.

It was indeed a storm, such as would have appalled the hearts of youngsters less accustomed to the woods than were our hero and heroine. But Roy and Nelly had been born and bred in the midst of stormy backwoods’ elements, and were not easily alarmed, chiefly because they had become accustomed to estimate correctly the extent of most of the dangers that menaced them from time to time. A gale of the fiercest kind was blowing. In its passage it bent the trees until they groaned and creaked again; it tore off the smaller twigs and whisked them up into the air; it lifted the snow in masses out of the open spots in the woods, and hurled them in cloud-like volumes everywhere; and it roared and shrieked through the valleys and round the mountain tops as if a thousand evil spirits were let loose upon the scene.

Silver Lake was still silvery in its aspect, for the white drift was flying across it like the waves of a raging sea; but here, being exposed, the turmoil was so tremendous that there was no distinguishing between earth, lake, and sky. “Confusion, worse confounded” reigned every where, or rather, appeared to reign; for, in point of fact, there is no confusion whatever in the works and ways of God. Common sense, if unfallen, would tell us that. The Word reveals it, and science of late years has added its testimony thereto.

Roy and Nelly very naturally came to the conclusion that things were in a very disordered state indeed on that Sabbath morning, so they returned to their hut, to spend the day as best they might.

Their first care was to kindle the fire and prepare breakfast. While Nelly was engaged in this, Roy went out and cut several small trees, with which he propped the hut all round to prevent it from being blown down. But it was discovered, first, that the fire would hardly kindle, and, second, that when it was kindled it filled the whole place with smoke. By dint of ............